‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

‘Dec. 2, 1784.’

’To MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.

’DEAR MADAM,

’I am very ill, and desire your prayers.  I have sent Mr. Green the Epitaph, and a power to call on you for ten pounds.

’I laid this summer a stone over Tetty, in the chapel of Bromley, in Kent[1198].  The inscription is in Latin, of which this is the English. [Here a translation.]

’That this is done, I thought it fit that you should know.  What care will be taken of us, who can tell?  May GOD pardon and bless us, for JESUS CHRIST’S sake.

’I am, &c.

‘SAM.  JOHNSON[1199],’

‘Dec. 2, 1784.’

My readers are now, at last, to behold SAMUEL JOHNSON preparing himself for that doom, from which the most exalted powers afford no exemption to man[1200].  Death had always been to him an object of terrour; so that, though by no means happy, he still clung to life with an eagerness at which many have wondered.  At any time when he was ill, he was very much pleased to be told that he looked better.  An ingenious member of the Eumelian Club[1201], informs me, that upon one occasion when he said to him that he saw health returning to his cheek, Johnson seized him by the hand and exclaimed, ’Sir, you are one of the kindest friends I ever had.’

His own state of his views of futurity will appear truly rational; and may, perhaps, impress the unthinking with seriousness.

’You know, (says he,)[1202] I never thought confidence with respect to futurity, any part of the character of a brave, a wise, or a good man.  Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing; wisdom impresses strongly the consciousness of those faults, of which it is, perhaps, itself an aggravation; and goodness, always wishing to be better, and imputing every deficience to criminal negligence, and every fault to voluntary corruption, never dares to suppose the condition of forgiveness fulfilled, nor what is wanting in the crime supplied by penitence.

’This is the state of the best; but what must be the condition of him whose heart will not suffer him to rank himself among the best, or among the good?  Such must be his dread of the approaching trial, as will leave him little attention to the opinion of those whom he is leaving for ever; and the serenity that is not felt, it can be no virtue to feign.’

His great fear of death, and the strange dark manner in which Sir John Hawkins[1203] imparts the uneasiness which he expressed on account of offences with which he charged himself, may give occasion to injurious suspicions, as if there had been something of more than ordinary criminality weighing upon his conscience.  On that account, therefore, as well as from the regard to truth which he inculcated[1204], I am to mention, (with all possible respect and delicacy, however,) that his conduct, after he came to London, and had associated with Savage and others, was not so strictly